New Delhi: India’s president Pranab Mukherjee, members of Nehru-Gandhi family and Congress leaders paid a low-key tribute Friday to Indira Gandhi on the 30th anniversary of the ex- premier’s assassination.
No ministers of India’s new government attended the event honouring Gandhi, gunned down by Sikh bodyguards on October 31, 1984, in retaliation for ordering an attack on a revered Sikh shrine to clear out militants holed up in the complex.
“I join my fellow countrymen and women in remembering former PM Indira Gandhi” on the anniversary of her death, right-wing Premier Narendra Modi tweeted to his 7.4-million followers.
But for the first time, no government representative attended the annual ceremony at the rose-strewn Gandhi memorial, local media reported.
Indira Gandhi’s daughter-in-law Sonia, 67, who cradled the leader’s head in her lap as she bled to death, led those paying tribute.
While staying away from the event marking Indira’s death, Modi and cabinet ministers flagged off a “run-for-unity” near the India Gate war memorial in the capital’s heart.
The run marked the birth of freedom fighter and Congress leader Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, India’s first home minister, who forged a united republic out of patchwork of princely states after independence from Britain in 1947.
Patel, deputy of India’s first prime minister, Congress leader Jawaharlal Nehru who was Indira’s father, “is truly the architect of modern India”, Modi tweeted.
The run-for-unity was another tribute to Patel by the BJP, which has appropriated Patel as a national unity symbol in what analysts said was part of a bid to break Congress’s traditional hold on Indians.
Earlier this year, Modi allocated $33 million (Dh121 million) in government funds to help build a 182-metre (600-ft) statue of Patel that will be the world’s tallest statue.
Modi asked people to build on Patels’ legacy of Patel for a “shresth” (great) India.
Just before thousands jogged down the Rajpath up to the India Gate monument nearly two kilometres away, Modi lavished praise on Sardar Patel — “Iron Man of India” — on his birth anniversary — and incidentally the death anniversary of former prime minister Indira Gandhi.
Modi marked Gandhi’s death anniversary by denouncing the anti-Sikh riots that left some 3,000 Sikhs dead, mainly in Delhi, saying it was “like a dagger pierced through India’s chest”.
“Our own people were murdered. The attack was not on a particular community but on the entire nation. It was like a dagger pierced through India’s chest.
“It is unfortunate that on the birth anniversary of a man who dedicated his life in uniting the country, a tragic incident took place 30 years ago that shook the country and left it deeply scarred,” Modi said, without naming the Congress party but leaving no one in doubt who his target was.
The Congress on Friday termed as “disgusting” and “petty-minded” the way the Narendra Modi Government marked the death anniversary while the ruling BJP wondered if that party prefers to see history through the “perspective” of Nehru-Gandhi family.
“It is petty-minded, it is partisan and disrespectful to those who gave their lives to their country, particularly Indira Gandhi who gave hers for the unity of this country,” Deputy Leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha Anand Sharma told reporters here, adding, it showed Modi and BJP for what they are.
